Strategic Workforce Planning has a talent for feeling both obvious (“of course we should plan”) and maddeningly hard (“where do we even begin?”). This session strips SWP back to the minimum viable approach that creates traction fast - without pretending you need perfect data, a new system, or a fully staffed CoE before you’re “allowed” to start. It’s designed for HR leaders who want SWP to become a repeatable business discipline, not a one-off project, and who suspect (correctly) that the biggest barriers are usually human and organisational, not technical. 

We’ll start with a simple premise: a tiny, complete pilot beats a giant half-built programme - because SWP earns its licence to operate through successive cycles of learning and proof, not through ambition alone. 

We’ll explore how to pick a starting point that matters (a business decision with risk, cost, or delivery consequences), define a manageable scope, and then build a plan that connects to real fulfilment choices. We’ll also reveal a simple AI step that anyone can take to get things going.

Because SWP lives or dies on credibility, we’ll also cover how to involve Finance in a way that strengthens you (Finance as partner, not absentee - or dictator), and how to communicate progress so the organisation sees SWP as a source of usable answers rather than an 80,000-word explanation of why it’s complicated.